Saturday, April 19, 2014

Day 6: In Montreal

I became very aware of my preoccupation with measuring my progress against percieved goals over the course of this trip.

Today I got lost a few times and felt stressed about not being as far along as I thought I needed to be. I'm starting to realize that this is stupid. I have no idea what I'm doing, and as I fumble along the way and waste time due to my ignorance, I'm slowly making up for it with the increased ability I'm developing along the way.

When I was 16 I rode my bike from Brantford to Hamilton and back, about 60km total. At that point I was a sleak, hormone driven machine of pure energy. I vividly remember that trip, and how much it hurt for the next two days. At the time I thought it was the most impressive physical feat I was capable of.

What I wondered today was - what would that 16 year old kid think if someone told him that a 20 year older, 50 pound heavier, drunken version of him would be doing almost double that distance everyday for six consecutive days and feeling pretty solid - solid enough to keep doing it for another 70 days?